After a week of attacks by the hardline Iranian newspaper Kayhan against Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi, the American newspaper issued a statement condemning the allegations as “completely false, outlandish and irresponsible.”

On August 12, 2015, the Kayhan newspaper published a front-page report supposedly based on an article by American commentator Michael Ledeen claiming that US Senator Chuck Schumer of New York had been in contact with leaders of the Iranian Green Movement (which grew out of the disputed presidential election in Iran in 2009) through an intermediary at the Wall Street Journal.

“If we look a bit carefully,” Kayhan wrote, “we see the contact person is no one other than the reporter who in 2009 was sent on a mission to Tehran by the Wall Street Journal to cover news of the Iranian presidential elections. This reporter’s name is Farnaz Fassihi, who entered Iran two months before the election and then got busy,” Kayhan wrote.

However, Kayhan got the facts wrong. Michael Ledeen’s article in Forbes magazine referred to a “friend on Wall Street” not the Wall Street Journal. It appears Kayhan’s translators confused Manhattan’s financial district with the newspaper and then concocted a story to smear a prominent award-winning journalist.

“The account in the Forbes opinion piece that is the basis for these accusations simply never happened,” Radio Free Europe quoted Matt House, a spokesman for Senator Schumer.

The attacks against Farnaz Fassihi have coincided with the ending of the trial in Iran of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who has been imprisoned there since July 22, 2014, on trumped-up espionage charges for which the Iranian judicial authorities have failed to present any proof. A verdict is expected within days.

“The manufactured charges against a credible Iranian-American journalist by Kayhan shows how this newspaper and other like-minded outlets fear independent reporting by the international media in Iran,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“This fraudulent scenario is a continuation of the long-standing practice by the Iranian authorities of defaming and discrediting any independent voices, and particularly an effort to cast aspersions against Iranian-American reporters in order to justify the accusations against Jason Rezaian,” Ghaemi added. “But the amateurish hand of the writers has been exposed and their ridiculous claims have been quickly dismissed.”

Kayhan has not yet responded to the facts presented against its false allegations. Nor has it made any reference to clarifications from Michael Ledeen and the Wall Street Journal.

Kayhan’s accusations against Fassihi were reprinted by other news outlets affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, such as the Javan newspaper and the Tasnim News Agency. Resalat newspaper also interviewed Iranian Members of Parliament to get their reaction to Kayhan’s false report.

In an article titled “The Report Card of a Woman of Iranian Descent: From Fabricating the Name of the Persian Gulf to Giving Seditious Reports,” the Tasnim News Agency repeated Kayhan’s false assumption that the supposed intermediary in Ledeen’s piece was from the Wall Street Journal.

The news agency described the Wall Street Journal’s Iranian-American reporter as a woman active in anti-Iranian affairs “who has carried out special work during the 2009 Sedition [the term hardline authorities use for the widespread peaceful protests that followed the disputed results of the presidential election in Iran that year] and compiled reports against our country. Farnaz Fassihi is someone whose scope of anti-Iranian activities is very wide and she has published hundreds of articles and reports against our country in that newspaper.”

Tasnim’s article also alleged that during the 2009 disturbances, Fassihi had described the detention and trial of reformist figures as illegal and degrading, and equated the expulsion of student activists with an act of war.

The mass detentions of peaceful protesters and the forced confessions that followed the 2009 elections were the subjects of many articles by independent reporters at the time. Fassihi was not the only reporter, domestic or foreign, who covered these subjects, as well as reporting on the plight of students prevented from continuing their studies because of their peaceful activism.

On August 16, 2015, the hardline Resalat newspaper published an interview with Member of Parliament Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, where he described reporters like Farnaz Fassihi as mercenaries “if the alleged reports are based on documented facts.”

The Alef website, run by conservative Member of Parliament Ahmad Tavakoli, on August 13, 2015, published an interview with the head of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Esmail Kowsari, who demanded “legal action” against Fassihi.

“The intelligence agencies and the Judiciary must pursue this case and take legal action against those who transfer information to the enemy,” Kowsari said.

Mohammadi, who has a history of severe health problems, was transferred from Evin Prison to Taleghani hospital in Tehran on August 2, 2015, because of neurological paralysis. After eight hours of preliminary medical observations, they took her back to prison, even though the doctors insisted she needed to be seen by a specialist, according to Rahmani.

“Her most urgent and most important request is that she be put under the supervision of a specialist physician. That’s what we have asked and the Prosecutor has apparently agreed to it, but no action has been taken yet,” Mohammadi’s husband told the Campaign from his current residence in France.

Mohammadi, a member of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, now banned in Iran, wasarrested on May 5, 2015, ostensibly to continue serving a six-year prison sentence dating from a2011 that she had been unable to serve because of her severe illness. That 2011 ruling was based on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security,” “membership in the Defenders of Human Rights Center,” and “propaganda against the state.”

The prominent activist’s return to prison can only be explained as a reflection of the authorities’ displeasure with her continued human rights activism in Iran.

Rahmani said when Mohammadi was brought to prison from the hospital on Sunday, her sister visited her during visitor’s hour and noticed that she was slurring her words and had difficulty speaking, “which are clear signs of neurological paralysis.”

“Narges’ case is in the hands of the Intelligence Ministry and the Judiciary. They are fully aware of her illness. The medical examiner of Zanjan stated in 2012 that her illness becomes worse in closed, tense, conditions….Her illness will get worse and reach a dangerous stage if she is not put under the care of a medical specialist,” Rahmani said.

“The Judiciary is responsible for protecting her life. Narges’ sentence was not gradual death. Even though we disagree with her [six-year] sentence, it should be carried out under conditions that do not lead to her death,” he added.

„The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it“ quoted by Amnesty International.

Two inmates on death row in Central Mashhad prison are at imminent danger of being hanged after Iran’s Criminal Court signed their death warrants promoting Human Rights organizations call for an immediate halt to the proceeding after reports the gallows are being made ready.

The Judiciary’s Office in Razavi Khorasan Province announced that two offenders would be faced execution by gallows on the charge of rape in the earlier morning, 9 August 2015.

Offenders R.B son of Ali-Mohammad and A.N son of Mohammad were convicted to death penalty by gallows in public for rape and cooperating of kidnapping and the other crimes at Branch 5 in the Province Criminal Court that also confirmed by Branch 28 at the Supreme Court of Iran as well.

The capital punishment will take place around Hafez Square at the Seyedi Avenue entrance in the city of Mashhad as Judicial Officials declared, the execution would be carried out by gallows in public by the Iran’s Judiciary officials at 9:00 A.M, Mondaymorning, 9 August 2015 as rights group said.

The death penalty is cruel, inhumane, and rights activists oppose the capital punishment „regardless of who is accused, the crime, guilt or innocence or methods of execution.

Iran’s authorities execute their citizens including offenders, dissidents or who were under 18-year-old when the crime was committed, deny all international community protests and objecting the cruel punishment.

The death penalty is used as a legal punishment as an irrevocable and ultimate punishment under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code. Denial of Human Rights, sentencing someone to death denies them the right to life. The risk of the punishment against an innocent person can never be eliminated and does not prevent crime.

„Countries who execute commonly cite the death penalty as a way to deter people from committing crime, this claim has been repeatedly discredited, and there is no evidence that the death penalty is any more effective in reducing crime than imprisonment“, Amnesty International said.

Please write immediately in Persian, Arabic, English or your own language:

Calling on the Iranian authorities to halt the execution immediately and unconditionally.

Calling on them to ensure that the offenders are protected from torture and other ill-treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement, which violates the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment.

The Islamic Revolutionary Court held its charges against Mohammad-Ali Taheri the founder of a spiritual group in Iran as his lawyer said.

Mohammad-Ali Taheri, an Iranian physician, researcher and author in the field of Interuniversalist alternative medicine, convicted to death penalty at branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court and the court decision received by his lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei on July 2015 .

Dr. Taheri, the founder of a spiritual group so-called “Erfan-E-Halgheh” (deviated Halqeh Cult) who has been in Evin prison since May 2011, was sentenced to capital punishment on the charge of “Ifsad fi al-Arz” (spreading corruption on Earth) under Islamic Penal Code as his lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh said.

He has been in the solitary confinement since his arrest, and in November 2014, he started a dry hunger strike (whereby a prisoner refuses both food and water) for 25 days to protest against his unfair isolation inside Ward 2-A Sepah at Evin prison in Iran’s capital, Tehran.

The governmental news agencies closed to Iran’s Intelligence Service said that Mr. Taheri convicted to six years imprisonment. He was previously sentenced to 37 years in prison, fine on the charge of blasphemy, disturbing the medical treatment and also convicted to 74 lashes for touching his patients without a medical license in the Revolutionary Court on 2014-2015 as news agencies said.

Mr. Taheri asked Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, to review his case by sending an open letter in April 2014.

Hereof, Amnesty International has concerned about Mr.Taheri’s critical situation in a statement on 30 August 2014. Moreover, Amnesty International started acampaign to release Mr. Taheri sending letter immediately to Iran’s authorities.

Mohammad Ali Taheri was detained on 4 May 2011 by officials linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and held incommunicado for nine months in Ward 2-A of the Evin Prison. Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran convicted him, on 30 October 2011, of “insulting Islamic sanctities” and allegedly sentenced him to five years in prison after four court sessions in which he defended himself.

The Iranian physician has been serving his prison sentence entirely in solitary confinement and his repeated requests to be transferred to a cell shared with other inmates have been denied.

Iran’s negotiations with the P5+1 powers are narrowly defined to include only the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. However, Tehran’s abysmal record on human rights should reveal to the world what to expect by way of compliance on any nuclear deal.

In facilities under their control, both the IRGC and the MOIS are permitted to execute prisoners without trial or effectively any judicial proceeding.

Iran will also have permission to import or develop Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to other continents, including to the United States.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s human rights record is among the earth’s worst. Iran’s horrific treatment of its own citizens, however, has long been obscured by headlines of the ongoing nuclear negotiations, from which human right issues have been excluded.

Lost in the daily detailed reporting about nuclear talks is the regime’s increased rate of executions of its own citizens during the negotiations. Iran now has overtaken China as having the highest per capita rate for inflicting capital punishment.

While the Islamic Republic dons a reasonable and sophisticated face to the world as it negotiates with P5+1 powers in Switzerland, the authoritarian theocracy’s intelligence services continue to arrest journalists, Bahai and Sunni religious minorities as well as ethnic minorities like Kurds from Kordestan Province and Arabs from Khuzestan Province.[1]

The regime runs such a vast network of prisons and detention centers, many of them still secret, that it has taken on the dimension of a state within a state.[2] This „Prison Archipelago,“ similar in relative size and brutality as the network once run by the Soviet KGB, is the primary instrument of terror that keeps the Iranian ruling class in power.

To grasp the magnitude of this domestic terror apparatus, one has only to consult the semi-annual reports on the human rights record of Iran published by United Nations Special Rapporteur Ahmad Shaheed.[3] While Westerners are treated to the smiling countenance of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and the sophisticated, reasonable, Westernized image of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s citizens must contend with the visage of the real Iran: the face of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) storm-trooper.

The IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) run their own network of prisons, detention centers and separate wards within certain jails. Ward 209, for instance, of Iran’s infamous Evin Prison in Tehran, is run by the MOIS.[4] Prison 59, also known as Detention Center #59, in Tehran, is run by the IRGC.

In facilities under their control, both the IRGC and the MOIS are permitted to execute prisoners without trial or effectively any judicial proceeding. Hundreds of extra-judicial executions have been carried out by the regime at Mashhad’s Vakilabad Prison.[5] Although many of those executed at Vakilabad are reported to be drug offenders and smugglers, some are ethnic Baluch irredentists and Sunni Muslims living in Sistan-Baluchistan Province, in Iran’s Far East.[6] Moreover, occasionally, regular prison guards initiate raids in which prisoners are beaten and sometimes killed — especially those inmates who have managed to embarrass the regime by secretly passing information to the Western media concerning human rights violations. [7]

In contrast to the media’s „soft image“ portrayal of Hassan Rouhani since his election to Iran’s presidency in June 2013, the rate of executions in Iran has increased dramatically.[8]Moreover, among those executed last year were human rights campaigners, political activists, and religious and ethnic minorities.[9]

Eyewitness accounts, many of them testimonies by former „citizens“ of the prison archipelago state, have attested to the use of widespread torture in Iran’s prisons. One type of torture noted by a former victim of the technique is called „the chicken“ (jujeh kabob): an individual’s arms are bent back and tied to his ankles while being suspended in mid-air. Karaj’s Gohardasht Prison has a suite of cells called Section 1, referred to by veterans of Iran’s Prison Archipelago as „Khane Sag“ or the „Dog House,“ where prisoners are usually subjected to constant torture, sometimes resulting in death. [10]

Rape of female prisoners increased after the arrests young people who protested the results of the 2009 presidential elections, which returned former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office for a second term.[11] Rape in Iranian prisons is also visited upon young males, a practice referred to as „under-bedding.“ Homosexual males in Iranian prisons are referred to as „vach“ a slang word that connotes sexual slavery.[12]

In the archipelago, the prisons are overcrowded, with many inmates forced to sleep on the floors of hallways outside the filthy cells. Detention centers, meant only to hold people for a few days while they are processed to prisons, often have only a couple of toilets for hundreds of detainees. Moreover, access to medical care is usually denied, leading to many unnecessary deaths of prisoners whose offenses may have only been minor.[13] Conditions were so bad in Ghezel Hasr Prison in Karaj — with cells holding four times their capacity — that inmates staged a revolt in March 2011, resulting in as many as 50 deaths.[14]

Iran’s Prison Archipelago reflects the core of the true nature of the Islamic Republic — not the Javad Zarif tableau that Kerry & Co. and the compliant media would evidently have us imagine,

If Congress wants to insert itself more effectively in defining what U.S. policy should be toward the Islamic Republic, it might borrow a page from the era that produced the Jackson-Vanik legislative initiative of 1975, which promised economic trade benefits to the USSR that were linked to the Soviets allowing their captive citizens to leave the country. This legislation helped liberation of hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews.

Iranian-Americans possess the potential to mobilize to achieve the same result for thousands of political prisoners in Iran, while educating American citizens about the real nature of the Islamic Republic.

Moreover, the Islamic Republic of Iran — until it completely changes its behavior, should not be permitted to pursue nuclear research that could lead to the development of a nuclear weapon or the capability to deliver one. The deal made with Iran will give it permission to import or develop Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to other continents, including to the United States.

Such an outcome would leave in tatters any worthy legacy of the current U.S. administration and of the politicians who support the deal.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, where he was a Military Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Israel.

[3] March 2015 Report on the Situation on Human Rights in Iran by the United Nations Special Rapporteur Ahmad Rasheed. See Rasheed’s exhaustively detailed reports on Human Rights in Iran published every six months as commissioned by the UN Secretary General.

[4] Ward 209, Former Inmate Report that it is run by VEVAK-the MOIS. See also report of journalists and bloggers Faribah Pajoh and Nafiseh Zareh Kohan, both of whom were arrested in August 2009 and who have been subsequently released.

[5] The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Reporting on Executions in Vakilabad Prison. See testimony of former inmates, such as that of Ahmad Ghabel. Executions carried out in Vakilabad Prison have been primarily for drug-related crimes.

[6] Sistan-Baluchistan Province is where Sunni Religious and Baluch ethnic minorities are most concentrated in Iran. But it is also the center of drug smuggling routes into Iran from Afghanistan’s vast expanse of opium poppy fields.

[7] „Letters from Iran’s Hellish Prisons“ by Jason Shams, 19 September 2010. On 17 April 2014, guards at Evin Prison in an event described as „Black Thursday,“ Evin Prison guards attacked prisoners in Ward 350.

[13] Advance Unedited Version of the 11 March 2014 Report of the Secretary General on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. P.6. Rights Disregarded: Prisons in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Intelligence Ministry has made a written request to impose the maximum punishment on human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, her husband Taghi Rahmani told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“Recently Ms. Mohammadi’s case file has included a letter from the Intelligence Ministry which recommends that the judge give her the maximum punishment. But this letter is against the law and undermines the independence of the Judiciary as well as the judge presiding over Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court,” Rahmani stated.

The latest charges against Mohammadi, who is the spokesperson for the now-banned Defenders of Human Rights Center, include “assembly and collusion against national security,” “propaganda against the state,” and “membership in the Step by Step to Stop Death Penalty” group, which is regarded as an illegal and anti-state group.

Since her controversial meeting with the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Tehran in March 2014, Mohammadi has received ten summonses and warnings and has been questioned by security authorities several times.

Taghi Rahmani told the Campaign that his wife’s trial was due to start on July 5 but for unknown reasons she was not transferred from Evin Prison and did not appear. The judge postponed the trial but no new date has been announced. Mohammadi’s trial was originally set for May 3 but her lawyer had requested more time to prepare.

Mohammadi wrote a letter from prison addressed to Tehran’s chief prosecutor. In the letter, published in Kalame.com on July 6, Mohammadi criticized the authorities for not allowing her to speak to her children on the phone.

“Is it against the country’s judicial regulations to let a mother or father hear her or his child’s voice for a few minutes, a couple of times a week? If not, why is this unfair practice going on? Does a mother’s contact with her child threaten national security? Or do you just want to further punish women who criticize?” the letter asked.

Mohammadi’s family have been told that her latest detention on May 5 is to enforce the six-year prison sentence imposed on her in 2012. At the time she was held in Zanjan Prison, but because of serious medical issues she was released on 600 million tomans (US $200,000) bail.

Two hundred and fifty human rights and women’s rights activists and journalists signed a statement on May 6, demanding the release of Narges Mohammadi.

Mohammadi’s husband has asked Iran’s Minister of Intelligence to help launch an investigation into her case, as well as the cases of other individuals prosecuted in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election and who are still in prison, such as Abdolfattah Soltani and Mohammad Seifzadeh.